Hasta La Ideas

Building-shaped cut-outs cast the shadow of a city onto a wall in this Copenhagen installation by Polish designer Izabela Boloz (+ slideshow + movie).

Shadow City by Izabela Boloz features 52 silhouettes in the shape of buildings, ships, boats, birds and fish. Each graphic is fitted to a transparent plastic sheet and positioned horizontally over a walkway at the edge of Sortedams Sø lake in Copenhagen’s central Østerbro district.

The shadows fall across a 100-metre-long green-painted wall below and slowly change throughout the day as the sun moves across the sky.

“Shadow City comes alive with the rising sun as the shadows travel across the wall,” said Boloz. “A playful image of a city appears, inspired by the history of Copenhagen, and changes as it slowly moves across the wall with the changing position of the sun.”

The whole project can be viewed by standing on a nearby pedestrian bridge.

“The installation introduces an element of surprise and intrigue, inviting the passers-by to observe the changing details in our surroundings,” Boloz explained. “As inhabitants of Copenhagen pass over the pedestrian bridge on their way to school, work or play, they will see the image of the city slowly travel across the wall, changing with every hour and every season.”

Shadow City will be on display until the autumn of 2014.

Other installations we’ve featured recently include an Escher-style installation outside the Tate Modern in London and bent bamboo walkways and seating by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma.

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Photographs are courtesy of Izabela Boloz.

Here’s a project description from the designer:

Shadow City

Sunlight and shadows are the materials in a public space installation Shadow City by Izabela Boloz in the picturesque district of Østerbro in Copenhagen.

With a series of 52 graphics that cast their shadows onto a 100 metre wall on the lake, Shadow City comes alive with the rising sun as the shadows travel across the wall. A playful image of a city appears, inspired by the history of Copenhagen, and changes as it slowly moves across the wall with the changing position of the sun.

Shadow City reveals the artist’s fascination with the passing of time. The installation introduces an element of surprise and intrigue, inviting the passers-by to observe the changing details in our surrounding.

As inhabitants of Copenhagen pass over the pedestrian bridge on their way to school, work or play, they will see the image of the city slowly travel across the wall, changing with every hour and every season.

Shadow City has been created in collaboration with Metro Copenhagen within a program to introduce art in public spaces in Copenhagen. The installation will be on view from the summer of 2013 until the autumn of 2014.

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Izabela Boloz appeared first on Dezeen.

Vienna design duo chmara.rosinke created this wooden vanity stand for a local shirt tailor (+ slideshow).

Anna Rosinke and Maciej Chmara designed A Tailor’s Ritual to be used for fittings at the Wäscheflott tailoring shop.

The vanity stand comprises mirrors, hangers for clothing and a storage shelf, which all pivot around the wooden frame.

The floor-length standing mirror is used with a circular mobile mirror to allow the customer to check the fitting in the back.

One brass hanger is used to hang-up the mock-up shirt and a second is for the final garment. “Wäscheflott always tailors a trial shirt before making the final one,” said the designers.

Tailoring tools such as needles and pins can be stored on the brass shelf.

The design was commissioned as part of the Passionswege project for Vienna Design Week 2013.

The Passionswege project, literally meaning “pilgrimage ways”, initiates collaborations between young designers and traditional Viennese companies. Wäscheflott has produced bespoke tailoring in the centre of old Vienna since 1948.

Anna Rosinke and Maciej Chmara won the top prize at the inaugural NWW Design Awards at Vienna Design Week 2012 for their mobile kitchen design.

Other vanity items include a storage box and mirror hanging either end of a leather strap and a dressing table with hinged doors. See more furniture design »

The post A Tailor’s Ritual by chmara.rosinke
for Wäscheflott appeared first on Dezeen.

This wooden holiday house by Swedish studio Strömma Projekt Max Holst Arkitektkontor is perched on the edge of a gorge in Vindö, an island on the Stockholm archipelago (+ slideshow).

Strömma Projekt Max Holst Arkitektkontor designed the single-storey house on a series of black concrete plinths, elevating it above the gorge so that surrounding trees appear at eye level from the windows.

The dark timber exterior is surrounded by a sheltered deck, leading into a combined kitchen, living and dining room, while two children’s bedrooms are connected to a playroom and sit adjacent to a bathroom and sauna.

Large windows offer views out into the woodland from all four sides of the house, while wooden ceiling beams are left exposed beneath the gabled rooftops.

Timber lines the walls, ceilings and floors throughout the house, complemented by wooden furniture and kitchen units.

“The material palette is simple and essentially rooted in local building traditions,” said the architects.

Wooden steps lead down to an exposed deck beneath the main house, then onwards to a small shed stacked with firewood at the end of a narrow walkway.

Other holiday homes we’ve featured include a cluster of holiday apartments around terraces connected by small alleys, a tiny wooden cabin containing a sauna and bedroom and a riverside house raised on tree trunks to prevent flooding.

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Photography is by Hannes Söderlund.

Here’s some information from the architects:

Holiday house Vindö

The site is located on Vindö, an island in the Stockholm archipelago, Sweden. Upon first glance the site appears a fairly typical archipelago plot with granite outcrops, pine trees and blueberry bushes but soon reveals it’s unusual dramatic topography presenting an exciting opportunity to the architect Max Holst as well as for the developer Strömma Projekt.

The building stands on a ridge bordering a 10 m deep drop into a gorge. In which a number of magnificent trees, mostly pine but also some hardwood grow. On the sheltered terrace and in the house one finds the tops of these trees at eye level.

The orientation of the ridge dictates the building’s form and the spatial subdivisions and the spatial emphasis is on the large living, dining and kitchen space, which leads onto to a large sheltered terrace towards south/east.

Children’s bedrooms are of a modest scale with a master bedroom located to the east. As a buffer between the living and sleeping areas, a bathroom and is located.

The hallway acts as a spacious playroom to the neighbouring the children’s rooms. The material palette is simple and essentially rooted in local building traditions.

Tectonically, the house is composed on black concrete plinths and exposed timber rafters highlight the repetition of a 120mm module on which the construction is based. The only setback from this strict systematisation occurs in the bathroom where the room is simply not suited for these measurements.

Room dimensions fell easily into place, becoming an exercise in creating dynamic spaces with a constant connection to the sky and surrounding forest, all within this framework.

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Max Holst Arkitektkontor appeared first on Dezeen.

Corten steel columns alternate with floor-to-ceiling glass to bring stripes of light and shadow into this funeral home outside Barcelona by Spanish firm Batlle i Riog Arquitectes (+ slideshow).

Located west of the city in the town of Sant Joan Despí, the stark concrete building nestles against a hillside and was designed by Batlle i Riog Arquitectes with a sloping grass roof that appears as an extension of the landscape.

At the front of the building, this roof pitches back up again to frame a long and narrow facade, where columns are arranged in two rows with a glazed perpendicular entrance in between.

“The steel pillars generate a light gradient, establishing visual filters and protecting the interior from the direct sunlight,” explained the architects.

The interior is divided into two sections that separate ceremonial activities from preparation areas. At the front, a succession of spaces lead guests from a spacious reception area into the main auditorium, then out via a private courtyard.

Each of these spaces features an assortment of raw materials that include stone floors, concrete ceilings and timber wall panels, as well as the vertical Corten elements.

Small plant-filled courtyards also intersperse the interiors and are surrounded by glazing to allow them to function as lightwells.

“The materiality generated by the assortment of exposed structural element textures together with the natural light qualify and determine the atmospheres of each space, accompanying the visitors’ mourning at every turn,” added the architects.

The rear spaces contain preparation areas where coffins can be housed before funerals take place.

Other funeral homes featured on Dezeen include a stone chapel with a sharply pointed gable in Germany and a whitewashed hall with a copper roof in Finland. See more memorial architecture »

Photography is by Jordi Surroca.

Here’s a project description from Batlle i Riog Arquitectes:

New Funeral Home in Sant Joan Despí

The building integration on site parts from the adaptation to the existing topography, with a set of pitched roofs on the terrain. The vegetation treatment of part of these roofs pretends to fade with the adjacent green slopes and improve the vision of the ensemble from the perimeter streets, on a higher level. With this strategy, in addition, the apparent building volume is reduced, lowering the vision of the construction and increasing the green surfaces.

The floor plan of the building, lays out an organisation in two areas clearly differentiated, by a public area composed by set of rooms designed to serve the users of the facility and a private area composed by the needed service rooms for the deceased preparation and the coffins movement between them. A system of patios completes the layout of the floor plan, these patios organise, rank and illuminate the spaces and establish filters between different ambiances.

The structural system is composed of walls and reinforced concrete slabs formed with pinewood boards and Corten steel pillars made of flat bars. All these elements define the building image and character providing simplicity to the materiality of the piece. The materialisation is completed with natural stone pavements and wooden vertical facing producing interior warmth. The steel pillars generate a light gradient, establishing visual filters and protecting the interior from the direct sunlight.

The materiality generated by the assortment of exposed structural element textures together with the natural light qualify and determinate the atmospheres of each space, accompanying the visitor’s mourning at every turn. In this way each space is illuminated by a specific light different from the rest. In essence, light and matter.

Authors: Enric Batlle I Durany, Joan Roig Duran, Albert Gil Margalef, Architects
Collaborators: Miriam Aranda, Architect / Dolors Feu, Agricultural Engineer & Landscape Designer / Diana Calicó, Elisabeth Torregrosa, Technical Architects / Sj12, Albert Colomer, Installation Engineering / Static, Gerardo Rodríguez, Structural Engineering

Builder: Vopi4
Surface: 700 Sqm
Location: Sant Joan Despí, Barcelona
Project & Execution Date: 2009-2011

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by Batlle i Riog Arquitectes appeared first on Dezeen.

This engineering research facility at the University of Debrecen, Hungary, by NAPUR Architect has a steel-panelled facade that can fold open to let daylight penetrate the laboratories inside (+ slideshow).

Budapest firm NAPUR Architect designed the steel-framed building to accommodate the university’s power engineering department, which researches and demonstrates electrical systems including generators, motors and transformers.

The two lower levels of the building house laboratories and teaching areas, while an open-air metal cage-like structure on top of the building functions as a research area for solar and wind energy.

The corrugated steel facade panels slide back to reveal windows on three corners of the ground floor and at the entrance, increasing or decreasing the amount of light inside each laboratory.

“The mobile frontal elements can provide full daylight or full darkness in internal spaces at any time of the day,” said architect Marcel Ferencz.

“The panels at the entrance are also used to dim the central space for lectures,” he added.

The first floor contains the power-engineering systems, a control area and service spaces.

The interior is heated via panels on the walls, floor and ceilings, while exposed concrete surfaces and work benches feature throughout.

Other laboratories we’ve featured are an electrical testing facility wrapped with crinkled polished metal, a pair of concrete laboratories elevated on red metal stilts and a cement manufacturing laboratory with a tapered concrete roof.

See more stories about laboratories »
See more architecture and design in Hungary »

Photography is by Tamás Bujnovszky.

Here’s a description from the architects:

DEM Power Engineering Demonstration Centre

The unique 300 m2 power engineering laboratory building realised in Hungary at the campus of the University of Debrecen explores and demonstrates the architectural and building power engineering connections of the climate change.

In the building open to the public the most up-to-date power engineering systems are presented in a manner understandable also by nonprofessionals, including technical solutions from the future of architecture installed freely, outside the walls without any covering.

The mobile frontal walls of the steel cube consisting of 15×15 m regular square elements hide a building embedded in a perfect sheath of power engineering built according to the ‘house in a house’ principle.

The building’s internal spaces – facing the four directions – demonstrate different usage comfort levels adjustable individually for each room by employing a variety of wall, floor, ceiling and air heating.

The mobile steel frontal providing for shading can be moved as desired by the time of day.

The mobile frontal elements can provide full daylight or full darkness in internal spaces at any time of the day. The solar power systems installed on the roof and the geothermal probes ensure that the building’s power consumption is nearly zero.

Architects: Marcel Dla Ferencz and Gyorgy Detary.

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by NAPUR Architect appeared first on Dezeen.